This invention relates to tents and other light, temporary structures made of canvas stretched over foldable armatures.
There is disclosed in the prior art, several types of collapsible and foldable tents and similar structures which use armatures made of wire loops that can be conveniently twisted and folded into compact shapes for easy storage and transport. When such a structure is made of several interconnected wire frames, it becomes very difficult to twist and fold the device into a compact shape. As disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,163,461 Ivanovich et al., it has been found necessary to provide swiveling connections between the ends of the wire loops in order to facilitate the folding process. The instant invention results from an attempt to reduce the amount of panel and armature material as well as the number of wall components and fasteners in relatively large canvas structures, and to improve the structure foldability without use of complex connecting hardware, and without compromising their volume and stability.
The principal and secondary objects of this invention are to provide a simple, lightweight, stable, yet easily collapsible and pliable, large size tent structure in a completely unitary and fully integrated configuration that does not require any swiveling fasteners within wire loop components. These and other valuable objects are achieved by using only one wire loop and canvas panel to form the floor of the structure and one or more close loops attached to the canvas portion of the floor to support the fabric cover.